Typical computer systems, especially computer systems using graphical user interface (GUI) systems, such as Microsoft WINDOWS, are optimized for accepting user input from one or more discrete input devices such as a keyboard for entering text, and a pointing device such as a mouse with one or more buttons for driving the user interface.
Some computing systems have expanded the input and interaction systems available to a user by allowing the use of a stylus to input information into the systems. The stylus may take the place of both the keyboard (for data entry) as well as the mouse (for control). Some computing systems receive handwritten electronic information or electronic ink and immediately attempt to convert the electronic ink into text. Other systems permit the electronic ink to remain in the handwritten form.
Electronic ink allows users to easily create and store handwritten notes. Handwritten notes may take a variety of forms including free form notes, maps, sketches, memorandums, to-do lists, and others. FIG. 12 shows a conventional note 1201 in which all information was typed into the system. The note 1201 includes a variety of regions including a “to” region 1202, a “from” region 1203, a “subject” region 1204, a “CC:” region 1205, and content 1206. This information may be generally referred to as document contents 1208. Finally, textual title 1207 identifies the note 1201.
While textual titles on notes are useful, issues arise when using a stylus-based input system. Because of the speed of creating notes and ability to have minimal limitations on the content of the notes, identifying the notes without some sort of identifier is troublesome for notes created using a stylus.
To address this issue, notes may be stored with the stored file identified by a textual title. The title generally includes some sort of meta-data that relates to the note's content, user, time of creation, and the like. However, textual titles suffer at least two drawbacks. First, textual title information may be difficult or involve multiple steps to create the title including touch-typing a displayed keyboard or handwriting ink then converting the ink into a textual title by handwriting recognition. Second, textual titles are prone to error because of the process by which they are entered as set forth above in a stylus-based input system. To correct this error, one then needs to spend even more time to correct a title of a note.
A further issue includes the concern of subsequent retrieval of the saved notes. Here, the user is required to remember and correlate the note with title, a particularly hard task when note titles contain handwriting recognition errors. Given that most human beings can quickly process a lot of visually rich information, a better system of organizing handwritten notes is needed. While some systems may use thumbnails to display the contents of a page, these thumbnails are not directly transferable to notes because thumbnails involve compressing a page down to a small size, thereby making handwritten ink illegible or otherwise useless for identification purposes. A system is needed that provides a way of organizing handwritten notes, permitting users to easily remember the content.